The Underside of Joy

pick them up. When he did, I told him what she’d said, and that time, he heard me. But the next day, she was gone.’
    ‘Did you hear from her after she left?’
    She shook her head. ‘Just once. I sent her cards, tried to keep in touch after that, but she never replied.’
    She took a deep breath. ‘Wow, I guess I needed to talk about this.’ She looked up to the rafters, started to say something else but hesitated. Finally she said, ‘Frank did tell me, just since Joe died, that he’d told Frank that Paige had written letters he’d never opened. The mother of his children was trying to contact him, but he ignored her. Right before he died, Joe told Frank that Paige had called him. That Paige wanted a custody arrangement. That Joe was going to have to talk to you – and he was dreading it.’
    I let go of the spoon, held my head in my hands. Remembering. We never had the conversation that night, because after we’d made love for the last time, I had waved off his request to talk, floating in my contentment, wanting to wait until the following day. ‘Tomorrow, then,’ he’d said, and touched my nose.
    Tomorrow . . .
    Lizzie touched my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry.’ She smiled. ‘But I still need you to stir. You can’t quit on me now.’ The colour of the liquid had lightened from dark gold to cream, and the consistency did remind me of fondue. We lugged the pots back into the barn, my eyes trying to adjust again while Lizzie went ahead and set her pot down. ‘Over here,’ she called. I made my way to another workstation, where rows of small bottles and jars filled an old glass-doored cabinet. ‘Now the fun begins.’ We added oats and powdered milk and cocoa butter to one batch, pear essential oil and dried calendula to another. Rosemary essential oils and lavender petals went into my pot. We kept adding fragrance and sniffing, then adding more.
    After we poured the liquid into the moulds, Lizzie turned to me. ‘There’s something else I want to say. Joe and I shared some harsh words. Me and my tough talk. But Joe was a good person. I think he was just scared. He got hurt. He wanted to protect the kids and himself . . . and you. But had he had more time –’ She looked away, then back at me. ‘I think he would have made it right. With time.’
    ‘Certainly you don’t think he would have just handed over the kids to Paige?’
    ‘No. I don’t. But I like to think he was on his way to a more . . . I mean, as Joe was building a life with you, he was getting over his anger at Paige. If Joe had lived, I’m certain he would have seen that shutting Paige out completely wasn’t good for Annie and Zach. You know? It was the most convenient thing at first. Actually, it was his only choice at first because that’s what she told him she wanted. I get that. And I feel for you, Ella, left with all the fallout. I do not envy you.’
    Before I left, Lizzie gave me a box of soap, including two bars from her children’s line, Milk & Honey Bunny, and a bottle of bubble bath called Here Comes Bubble, to take home for the kids. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is not your mother’s soap.’
    I walked home, waving at the cars that honked hello without lifting my head to see who it was. Someday Annie and Zach would have questions about why Paige left. Because they were kids, they would feel that somehow it was their fault. Annie probably already felt it, a thorn of blame she couldn’t quite identify, like a tiny thistle woven into her sock. Those letters might tell them the real story. If I didn’t give them to the court, but let the kids read them when they were older? They would know I’d withheld evidence in order to prevent Paige from having custody. But if I did hand the letters over to the court, if I did the right thing? The judge could very well still rule in my favour. In Annie and Zach’s favour. I believed he would still think that staying with me was in their best interest . . . no matter what the letters said.
    Still. I would be risking everything.
    I held a bar of soap up to my nose and sniffed. Not my mother’s soap. Not my grandmother’s, either. There was yet another layer to the lesson she’d taught me that day.
    I don’t know how long I’d hid in my grandmother’s basement after her slap, but eventually hunger overtook my disgrace, forcing me upstairs to her kitchen. Neighbours were putting out plates of ham sandwiches with bowls of potato and macaroni salad. Grandma walked in